1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to the implementation of a system for creating original musical compositions by and in a computer-based device.
2. Related Art
In the prior art, the concept and development of automated music composition has existed since 1956. The work in automated music composition has generally been divided into two broad categories: the creation of music in a "new style" and the creation of music based upon an "existing style". Developments in the latter began in the middle 1960's. This early work was concerned primarily with using analyses of statistical distributions of musical parameters to discover underlying principles of musical organization. Other attempts have tried to show relationships between language and style in order to define elements of style. Still other developments have used existing music as source material with algorithms to "patch" music together, with the existing music already in the desired style such that patchworking techniques simply rearrange elements of the existing music.
In one such example, melodic materials from one piece, harmonic materials from another and written materials from yet another are taken and combined in order to create new pieces. Another example involves rule-based systems like David Cope's "Experiments in Musical Intelligence" (EMI) as discussed in his book Computers and Musical Style, A-R Editions, Incorporated, Madison, Wis. (1991). This rule-based EMI system uses a database of existing music and a pattern matching system to create its music.
In particular, the EMI system generates musical compositions based on patterns intended to be representative of various well known composers or different types of music. However, the implementation of the EMI system can and has generated compositions that are inconsistent with the style or styles of those the system is intended to imitate or that are nonsensical as a whole. Other systems of automated music composition are just as limited, if not more so, in their capabilities for producing musical compositions. Such other systems have relied primarily on databases of or algorithms supposedly based on the styles of known composers. These systems at best merely recombine the prior works or styles of known composers in order to produce "original" compositions.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,281,754 to Farrett et al. discloses a method and system for automatically generating an entire musical arrangement including melody and accompaniment on a computer. However, Farrett et al. merely combines predetermined, short musical phrases modified by selection of random parameters to produce data streams used to drive a MIDI synthesizer and thereby generate "music".
U.S. Pat. No. 4,399,731 to Aoki discloses an apparatus for automatically composing a music piece that comprises a memory that stores a plurality of pitch data. Random extractions of the memory are made based on predetermined music conditions to form compositions of pitch data and duration data specifically for sound-dictation training or performance exercises. This device merely creates random combinations of sound data for the purpose of music training without any capability of generating any coherent compositions that could be considered "music".
Like the prior art as a whole, these two references fall far short of embodying any structure or method even remotely approaching any of the features and advantages of the present invention.